Is it worth buying an Apple Watch? That's the big £££-swallowing question nagging away at Apple fans everywhere since the new iPhone-compatible smartwatch was unveiled. Maybe the question is really "Can I afford to buy an Apple Watch on the possibility that it might actually turn out to be a bit crap?" or just "Do I really need an Apple Watch?"

I've purchased too many different types of iPod, and once bought an official pack of Apple playing cards from the Apple HQ campus store. I have an Apple TV sat in a drawer somewhere. Hell, I even owned a Mac clone.

So I'm an obvious target for the Apple Watch. Except, I'm not that bothered. And I really should be. Read: Apple Watch hands-on review.

Try watching the Apple Watch videos. If you like watches it's hard not to be impressed. Let's be honest, it's hard not to drool.

Not everyone owns a watch, or has any wish to. Mintel's 2010 study figures show that 14 percent of the UK population don't want to wear a watch, which translates to around nine million people. Many of the remaining 86 percent might not be wearing it every day; they only claim to "own" a watch.

Apparently this is down to the mass adoption of smartphones. So blame Apple. Even dumb phones tell you the time.

Again, I'm not sold on using my phone as a timepiece, so an Apple Watch should suit me fine. I like to merely turn my wrist to see what time it is, not pull the damn phone out of my pocket. It's also less obvious in meetings, when stuck in conversation with someone you'd rather avoid, or while chatting to your partner.

There's no doubt that the Apple Watch looks cool, and stylish, and has tremendous geek appeal. And everyone's a geek nowadays, right?

People are saying that they thought the iPad was silly until they bought one. That's a good point. You find out how good something is by using it, and the iPad has been a massive hit. That said, I love the iPad as a device but hardly ever touch mine, except to pull it from my daughter's grasp when she's been on it too long. I could easily live without my iPad. And something tells me the same would be true of the Apple Watch. Read: iPad reviews.

The Apple Watch comes in three models and plenty of flavours - 34 in total by our counting. The entry-level Apple Watch will be priced starting at $349, so expect a £299 price tag in the UK. The Apple Watch Sports version will likely cost more, and the high-end will be a choker.

I actually wear two watches. My Fitbit Force, which includes a time display, is on 24 hours a day as it measures my sleep as well as letting me know when to drag myself out of bed and start walking and climbing to my distance targets.

My other watch is both more traditional and a lot more personal. It's a 1967 Rolex Oyster Perpetual that was my grandfather's retirement present. As such it has real sentimental value, plus a stylish jewellery factor.

And, unlike the Apple Watch, it never runs out of juice. I don't even have to wind it up, as its self winding mechanism handles all that for me. The Fitbit needs charging every 10 days. Apple hasn't said how often the its Watch needs charging, and it will depend on how you use it, but I bet it's more often than once a week once it's properly available. Sources close to Apple reportedly admit that currently it needs charging every day.

Use it to its fullest and the prospect of having to charge the thing once a day (Apple's record on battery life is pretty poor, remember) is a big turn off - no matter how cool its inductive charging is.

That Rolex is not going to sit in a drawer, so the Apple Watch will have to displace my Fitbit, and that means an end to the sleep tracking.

The Apple Watch will be an immediate success, I'm sure. There are enough Apple nuts out there with sufficient funds to ensure this. But will the take-up drop off when the rest of the population has to decide whether an Apple Watch is really worth it?

The iPhone spread in popularity as people ooh'd and cooed with the phones of early adopters. Word spread quickly, and the iPhone took over the world.

But the rest of the population won't be able to use the Apple Watch, as so many of them now use Android smartphones, and the Apple Watch requires you own an Apple iPhone. The target market therefore gets so much smaller. Not so small that the Apple Watch is doomed, and not even niche, but smaller for sure. And a recent poll suggests that people won'y change their smartphone platform just to use a smartwatch.

When Apple launched the iPod it only worked with Macs, but the Mac was in danger then. Is Apple suggesting that it needs the Watch to prop up the market-shedding iPhone?

The next generation of activity trackers will have most of the fitness features of the Apple Watch, and offer more - such as the aforementioned sleep monitoring. And they will be priced at around £100 at the high end.

So I'm not sure Apple will make all those users switch to its £300 (minimum) watch, even if it is a thing of beauty with many more uses. And don't forget, they have to own an iPhone too.

Some of the Apple Watch functions are seriously cool. The Friends tapping messages and images to pals and loved ones is something so new and so wow that only Apple could have come up with it. It has almost limitless possibilities.

Maps on your wrist looks handy, too, although the lack of GPS on the Apple Watch limits its use somewhat.

Calendar alerts. Tick. Messages. Tick. Siri? Er, no thanks.

No web browser looks like a weird omission, and photos are going to be too small, surely, and eat up all the probably minimal storage anyway. Ditto music.

So the Apple Watch has to appeal enough to watch users to make them dump their Swatches, Tag Hauers, Tissots, Timexes and multiple fashion-brand watches. Sentimental value plus status symbols are hard things to dislodge off people's persons.

High-end Swiss brands are so expensive because they hold their value. Apple is going to find it difficult to break open that market because the Watch has a relatively short lifespan. You don’t replace a Rolex every year. You will with an Apple Watch, especially as its battery will reduce in function over time.

That leaves people who don't wear watches. If the Apple Watch can't persuade them that their iPhone won't do instead, then the Apple Watch market gets smaller still.

I love the look of the Apple Watch, and am sucker enough to pony up the dosh on something I don't really need.

But I love my Fitbit and normal watch just a little too much to consider wearing three watches!

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David B. Durand - 20:26 27-01-2015

Nice article! Do you happen to know which watch series will include nickel free versions for those wearers with a nickel allergy? I assume that the aluminum case of the Sport version as well as the gold case of the Edition version would be non-allergenic for most people. Is that your understanding? And what is your estimate of the battery life of an Apple Watch, not short term charge life, but long term rechargable lifespan? Thanks.

Truffol - 02:46 15-09-2014

While one thinking is that the Apple Watch market can only be as big as the iPhone market itself (as it isn't compatible with Android), if the Apple Watch proves super successful I wouldn't be surprised to see people switching to iPhone in order to use the Apple Watch

Dragonfly - 01:32 15-09-2014

I remember once saying I didn't think an iWatch (or Apple watch) would be viable because of the battery life, and nobody would want to be charging their watch every night. I'm not really sure my thoughts on that have changed, even with the magnetic charger.Reportedly, the Apple watch currently needs charging every night (much the same as the iPhone). I expect a big part of that is the bluetooth communication between it and the phone.Apple is said to be working on increasing this time before its release in early 2015 (I'm guessing a software only fix because getting a modified device FCC approved again before manufacture would delay things further). However I'd argue that unless they can get it to 2 days+ it's pointless using an uncharged watch for the 2nd day, if it only takes us to mid afternoon.At the minimum, I think the watch should tell us the time, even if the batteries go flat. Perhaps shutting everything off and going into 'time only' mode when battery reaches 10% would be a good option.